Jaffzilla
by Pen Grant, El Etherington and Alex Holland for £2.20

UPDATE 13/04/2006: Son of Jaffzilla has now been created, with an orangey bit that is actually smashing. See the end of this report for more info.

The Giant Jaffa Cake has a long history; McVities once went up against the Taxman to prove that the Jaffa was a cake and not a biscuit, and therefore exempt from luxuries tax. To prove their point, they baked a giant Jaffa, and showed it to the jury, arguing that if this was a cake, why wasn’t a normal sized one?

They won, of course. The outcome of this case costs the UK economy around £34m in taxable revenue per annum, and lingering government resentment has kept the Jaffa Cake off Civil Service biscuit trays ever since.*

* This last sentence is not actually true

Let’s neatly segue from Jaffa Solicitors to Soliciting Jaffas. How do you pimp such an icon? We thought the best way would be to pay tribute to McVities star legal advisors, and try and re-create the Jaffzilla that bulldozed its way through the courts.

Know Your Enemy

The first step was to analyse the key components of a Jaffa. We abducted two innocent cakes, and subjected them to a terrifying process of vivisection. The results can be found below:

Clearly, sponge cake + smashing orangey bit + chocolate = Jaffa Cake. It’s interesting to note that any one of these three components eaten separately are really quite unpleasant, particularly the chocolate; the genius is in the mix.

The ingredients assembled, and a good nine or ten Jaffa Cakes consumed in the name of science, we set to work.

For the smashing orangey bit, we’re mixing orange zest, freshly squeezed orange juice and the terrifying horror that is gelatine. Sadly, this is not vegetarian friendly; it’s made of rendered cow hooves, or elephant toes, or something. It certainly smells like it’s made of feet. Into the fridge it goes.